2024-04-16 02:28:42
Fabian Picardo, Chief Minister of Gibraltar, was made to sit at the table for the first time. It was in Brussels, where on Friday he participated with the representatives of Spain, the United Kingdom and the European Union in the meeting that must clarify what situation this territory is in after Brexit and, of course, what happens with the grate The grid is the eternal discussion, a grid to put in and take out, which opens and closes depending on the Spanish and British political interests at any given time. But let’s leave the grating aside and get to what matters: Picardo had never met the Spanish foreign minister, since Gibraltar’s foreign relations are normally handled by the metropolis, London. This “elevation” in category – in diplomacy gestures are never casual -, ratified by the fact that the final communiqué was signed by all four parties, gives Picardo practically the status of a statesman.
Picardo has ceased to be the lonely llanito, the one who always stayed at the door of the meeting rooms because he was not well received there. His appearance as an actor of American comedies, specifically of the friend of the protagonist, a good-hearted baboon with overweight and also sexual problems, undoubtedly served to open the doors of the meeting to him, I’m sure there he told some joke or that some innocent mishap happened to him – spilling the coffee, leaving the toilet with his fly open – of those who cheer up every evening.
It’s not easy being Gibraltar’s Chief Minister. One never knows for sure whether it is a minister, a delegate, a settler, a colonizer or a guy who happened to be passing by and found a well-paid job. For the Spanish, and especially for the self-described soca-rel Spaniards, Gibraltar is an affront, a peg that the perfidious Albió placed on their homeland and refuses to remove.
Assault Gibraltar
During the Franco regime, every political or economic crisis was disguised with a call to storm Gibraltar. Calls only by mouth, of course, as they always are in Spain – and let’s not say in Catalonia -, which were resolved with a demonstration more or less organized by the regime in which “Spanish Gibraltar” was called several times, before going – everyone goes home to watch TV bought in installments. The Argentine military copied this very Spanish tactic to hide the same faults and did the same with the Falklands, although the very beasts got away with it and really attacked them. That’s how it went for them, and they continue to lick their wounds. You need to know who you can mess with, this applies both when you are at school and in the Government of a nation.
Despite the potato omelette and sangria – which is all we can offer them – the Gibraltarians prefer to remain British subjects, thus making good the phrase attributed to Cánovas del Castillo that “he is a Spaniard who cannot be anything else”. Since they can be something else, it is natural that they choose it, as so many companies also choose to set up in Gibraltar, to take advantage of its tax advantages. In the south of Spain there is Gibraltar and in the north, Andorra, to make life easier for people who have money. Or to go shopping for a day, in the case of those who don’t have that many. In the case of Gibraltarians, one imagines them closely following Spanish politics and falling to the ground laughing if, right after, someone asks them if they would not like to be Spanish.
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There are also macaques, it’s not all about money. The Barbary monkeys, typical of the place, are the only wild primate in Europe, if we ignore humans, who in savagery have no rival. They are free to move throughout the territory, although they prefer the protected area of Penyal, where they prey on tourists as much as they can. According to legend, the day the monkeys leave Gibraltar, so will the British, so one of Picardo’s duties is to look after them and feed them. Not personally, I suppose.
So pleased was he to be considered another Picardo at the meeting on Gibraltar’s future, he spent the day posting pictures on Twitter, just as any teenager invited to a birthday party he didn’t expect to go would. Apart from that, the only remarkable thing is that the meeting fulfilled all the expectations that had been placed on it, its result was that of all high-level political meetings: it served to declare that the parties they continue to work on finding a solution. And so, as we say in Catalonia, as the day passes, the year pushes on.
#longer #lonely #llanito